Year: 2020
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Maxwell Finland: expert in infectious diseases
Martin DukeMystic, Connecticut, United States Maxwell Finland (1902-1987) was a remarkable physician, teacher, and researcher in infectious diseases. His life began during the turmoil of the pogroms in Tsarist Russia and ended in the heady academic and medical surroundings of Boston, Massachusetts. It was a life well spent. Whatever else may have prompted Frank and…
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Ghirlandaio, humanism, and truth: The portrait of an elderly man and young boy
Vincent P. de LuiseNew Haven, Connecticut, United States “. . . There is no more human a picture in the entire rangeof Quattrocento painting, whether in or out of Italy . . .”– Bernard Berenson Among the defining characteristics of the Renaissance were humanism and naturalism. While many Renaissance paintings and sculptures were depictions of…
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Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man
JMS PearceEngland, UK Second only to his Mona Lisa, the most famous drawing in the world of art is perhaps Leonardo da Vinci’s (1452–1519) Vitruvian Man. Leonardo was the illegitimate son of a notary and a peasant girl. He was named after his birthplace Vinci (at Anchiano) near Florence. He became a painter, draftsman, sculptor,…
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Use of masks to control the spread of infection: more than a century of confusion
Jayant RadhakrishnanDarien, Illinois, United States Johann von Mickulicz-Radecki (1850-1905) was an ardent advocate of the one-time novel concept of aseptic surgery. To improve his results, he began working with a hygienist and bacteriologist, Carl Flugge (1847-1923), who pointed out possible sources of infection for the surgical patient, including droplets dispersed from the nose and mouth…
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Sir Victor Horsley’s fatal blind spot
Faraze A. NiaziJack E. RiggsMorgantown, West Virginia, United States A belief is not merely an idea the mind possesses; it is an idea that possesses the mind. -Robert Oxton Bolton Sir Victor Horsley is generally regarded as the “Father of Neurosurgery.”1 He may have even been destined for greatness, as it was Queen Victoria herself…
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Using Latin to settle medical pronunciation debates
Raymond NoonanBrooklyn, New York, United States Author’s note: Original Latin words are written in italics, with macrons (ā) indicating long vowels. Equivalent Latin-derived medical terms are given without italics. Acute accents (á) are sometimes used to indicate stress accent in both English and Latin. Informal phonetic spelling that should be familiar to most readers is…
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Great expectations
Anthony PapagiannisThessaloniki, Greece “Doctor, I want you to treat her as a forty-year old!” What is the appropriate answer to a demand like that from a daughter about the treatment of her eighty-eight-year-old mother? Any suggestion that her mother might not do well even with the best treatment in the world is anathema to her.…
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The art of nursing
Isabelle J. St. JohnMilwaukee, WI Nursing is not just a science but an art, and I am an artist of care. This has been my guiding philosophy throughout my education and career. As a child, I was guided in the practice of analyzing and interpreting art by mentors, who did not shy away from challenging…
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Deserving but unrecognized: the forty-first seat
Marshall A. LichtmanRochester, New York, United States The Nobel Prizes Each year on December 10th, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death, the Nobel Foundation and the Swedish royal family recognize the individuals deemed to have made the greatest achievements in chemistry, physics, physiology or medicine, and literature; and the Norwegian Nobel Committee recognizes “the person…
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The Bengal tiger: Panthera tigris tigris
James L. FranklinChicago, Illinois, United States The Indian subcontinent for millennia provided the ideal “jungle” habitat for the tiger. When the first Europeans arrived in India the animal was ubiquitous. At the close of the nineteenth century, when Kipling wrote The Jungle Books, 100,000 tigers were thought to roam the subcontinent. By 1971, a critical…